Forty-Fifth Paradox Writing

Dear Friends and Family,

We’d like to invite you to our wedding, but first we’d like to invite you to help pay for it. We don’t want your money, but we’d like your pop cans. You see, we’d like to turn in about 400,000 pop cans by July so we can pay for the ceremony. Hopefully we’ll see you on the 31st!

The future Geyers.

http://weddingcans.com./

PS: It’s green!

Though she’s not my husband, nor even my lover,

she’s an heir to a special part of my heart.

I know she’s alive,

but the distance that separates us is an ocean,

and it takes far too long to sail home.

My suitors are not but worries, anxieties, fears

that visit me every morning and every evening.

I know the moment she comes home they’ll flee

like dust in the four winds.

I fear she faces many trials and monsters harm in women’s clothing,

and that she will come home one day,

but I want her home today.

The gun cocked as he raised it toward her. “Give me your money.” His eyes stared at her own eyes firmly, holding an empty sack in his hands.

The room stood empty, everyone else had fled the moment the gun came out. Unfortunately, the barista had to earn her wages, and so she stayed. “No.” She drummed one set of fingers on the counter, while she hid the other set from view.

“Don’t make me shoot.” His eyes narrowed, as sweat began to trickle down his left temple.

“Don’t make me.” Her hidden hand pulled out her own gun, which she used to mirror his actions.

His gun thudded to the floor as his feet swept through the door as fast as they could take him.

She set down the gun and picked up the phone, dialing the police. With a unshaken voice she told the dispatcher the details of her latest adventure. “You might want to arrest this guy before I have to use my Christmas present on him. I’d hate to have to waste this ammo.”

Inspired by Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, also titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas”

Twas the Night Before Christmas

When all through the flat,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even the cat.

The stockings were hung by the heater with care,

Lighting the filthy fireplace we wouldn’t dare.

The parents were snuggled and warm in their beds

While visions of school-buses drove in their heads.

My mother in her pjs and dad in his shirt

Had just dozed off, to sleep off dessert.

When out on the street there rose such a racket,

I sprang from my desk and threw on my jacket.

Away to the window I zipped like the Flash,

Looking outside, expecting a car crash.

I saw street lights reflected on fresh-fallen rain,

Damp moss, slick roads, and rusted road drains.

And what, to my wandering eyes should appear,

But a hovering motor home and eight hybrid reindeer.

With a weighty old driver, yet so lively and slick,

I knew in a moment he thought himself Saint Nick.

More wild than bikers on their cycles he came,

And his sleeves held more tricks than a cheating card game!

“Oh darn it, oh darn it. I think it’s broken.”

He swore. “the shop’ll be closed in the mornin’.”

He glanced at the house, at the door, and the top of the wall,

and spotted the tools for an overhaul.

As burglars check for cameras before they break in,

“Santa” checked the perimeter with a flick of his chin.

So up to the front door quietly he sneaked,

Except for when the floorboards creaked.

And then in the rustling I heard at the door,

The scratching and grinding of jams and bores.

As I grabbed Dad’s gun, and was turning around,

Through the front door Santa came in a bound.

He was dressed in dark red,  from his head to his boot,

And his clothes were all trashed with grease and soot.

A bag of plunder he slung on his back,

And he looked just like a beggar, just opening his sack.

His eyes, they darkened, his wrinkles were sinister.

His cheeks were like canyons, his nose like a mountain.

His thin lips were creased like paper,

And the beard of his chin was ashen like slush.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

Smoke poked my throat like thorns in a wreath.

He had a small face and a bouncing round belly,

That shook when he laughed, and he made the room smelly.

He was chubby and fat, a right creepy old fart,

And I hacked when I saw him, and it gave him a start.

A wink of his eyes, and a twist of his head,

Soon told me to know I had everything to dread.

He said not a word, and set to his work,

and ate the milk and cookies, the old jerk!

Stepping too close to the sensors beside his nose,

He set the alarms blaring, in mid-bite he froze!

He sprang out the door, wrapped tool box in hand,

and tried the engine to get out of this land.

But I heard the sirens, and smirked as he stood in plain sight,

and watched them arrest him on that cold winter night.

“Hey Dad?” She bobbed on her heels, the curls in her pigtails bouncing. Her small pink hands grasped onto the corner of his armchair as she leaned towards him.

“Yes Princess? He glanced down through the narrow passage between the newspaper and his face.

“Would you pray for me?”

The newspaper sank a little, crackling slightly as it wrinkled in his hands. “What’s wrong?”

Princess beamed, her curls bouncing a second time. “Oh, nothing’s wrong Daddy.”

“Oh?”

“Mommy says that when two or more people pray, God’s with ‘em.”

“Mm-hm.” One of his eyebrows stretched to the ceiling knowingly. “And what are you praying for?”

“A pony.”

“A pony? But Princess….”

“Would you please pray for me? Pretty please?”

“Of course. But don’t get mad at me if God says to wait.”

 

Dear Guests,

I apologize  for my recent hiatus from the Forty-Fifth Paradox. Some issues in my personal life and some issues in my academic life allied themselves against me and declared war on my free time. It took around three weeks to vanquish them and currently I’m demanding reprimands. (No word yet on whether or not these issues will be paying off my war debt.)

In other news, I revamped my fan page on facebook for your fanning pleasure. I assume, since you’re already at the Forty-Fifth Paradox, that you’re already a subscriber. In case you would like to hear about my other exploits, whether it be photography, non-fiction writing, or even updates on my novel, that’s the first place to look. Here it is! http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/pages/Sara-J-Pittock/201469062363?ref=nf

Mr. Manager raises dreams,

Then kills them with detergent mixed

with capitalistic greed.

It doesn’t taste like cherry syrup,

Or blue coconut.

Rather it tastes like greenish-whiteish tomatoes

On a burnt cheeseburger,

That’s 30 seconds late.

Kidney for Sale! Kidney for Sale! Black market kidney for Sale! Costly kidney for sale!

Comes with pot-infected vessles, but from an otherwise healthy owner. Original owner can not guarantee his moral health or mental heath.

Kidney comes complete self-doubt, incrimination, and a lack of ethical boundaries. Buy at own risk (and the risk of others.)

How could you!?

All these moments past,

Pages turned,

And thoughts tightly wound up in such a story…

And you give me this!?

I thought we had something, you and I,

A relationship at most,

A trusting appeasement at least.

I gave you my time, my mental energy,

Heck, even my imagination.

The least you could do is not kill off my favorite character.

I’d end what’s left of our friendship,

But I haven’t finished the book yet.

Slaying dragons really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. First off, they smell terrible. Just one whiff of dragon’s breath makes my stomach do somersaults and my head feel funny. It’s difficult to even approach them, because their skin does little to block the heat burning inside.

They’re difficult to reach too. Dragons tend to chose nests at the bottom of canyons, at the fard end of caves, or my least favorite: mountain tops. By the time I reach the dragon, I’m nearly too exhausted to fight. But at that point, it’s kind of too late to turn back. And so I entered the ‘dragon’s lair’, as it were.

Did I mention they’re mind readers? I never dare think of anything but the dragon and its scales. If I thought about my fair maiden, the dragon would surely attack her when he’d finished with me. If I thought too much about the fight itself, surely the dragon would know my attacks before I made them. But I should avoid not thinking at all…for that would have surely lead to my certain death.

As for the reward, I’ll just call it awkward. I mean…I’ll call her awkward. Marrying the princess sounded like a wonderful idea…until I married her.